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RITUALS; When Boy Meets Movie, Adventures In Baby-Sitting Begin

MY nephew Fred, who turns 3 in December, is working hard at mastering the art of conversation. His preferred opening gambit is, ''What your favorite moodie?''

''Moodie'' is movie, and Fred is an enthusiastic cinemaphile. He has seen a half dozen in movie theaters already and many more on DVD and video. He can talk about them for hours, and often does during our weekly visits, usually on a Friday night or weekend afternoon, when I baby-sit so that my sister and her husband can run errands or catch a movie themselves.

Fred's passion for movies is genetic. I am a movie critic by profession, his mother works for an entertainment magazine, and his father is so in love with any and all films that he was once heard to say, after viewing the jaw-droppingly abysmal ''Battlefield Earth,'' ''Well, for an action movie it wasn't that bad.''

I have seven other nephews and nieces, but Fred is the only one within walking or even driving distance, so he's the one I see the most. I always figured I would bond with a nephew or niece over movies; I just didn't reckon on it being at quite this tender an age.

Whether I'm baby-sitting for Fred at his apartment in Manhattan or he's being dropped off at mine, his first question is always the same: ''Caputer? You have caputer?'' He means computer; specifically, my laptop with its built-in DVD player. This is his favorite toy. If I'm at his place and I've brought it with me, he waits impatiently while I turn the computer on and it boots up. Then, he jams a DVD of ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' or ''Peter Pan: Return to Never Land'' into the slot.

We also use the computer to go online. He already knows that all movies have Web sites packed with games and trailers. Fred doesn't yet distinguish between actual movies and trailers. As far as he is concerned, watching the trailer for ''Scooby-Doo'' is the same as seeing the movie, a blessing since trailers rarely last longer than two minutes.

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Even when we venture outside during our visits, Fred's obsession with films remains strong. If it's raining, he invariably breaks out into a chorus of ''Singing in the Rain,'' twirling his little umbrella and doing a passable imitation of Gene Kelly's signature dance from the movie of the same name. If it's a beautiful day and we're ambling down the street, Fred excitedly points out movie posters plastered on walls and bus shelters. ''It Jimmy Neutron,'' he bellows, much to the amusement of passers-by.

A while back, when we had to take a bus, Fred insisted on riding what he called a Stuart Little bus, one carrying a poster for ''Stuart Little 2'' on its side. He held fast, letting two non-Stuart Little buses pass before one with a prominently displayed picture of the white mouse showed up and Fred happily clambered aboard. (Let me hasten to say that we were in no hurry; I'm not always that indulgent.)

One of our regular haunts is the neighborhood Barnes & Noble, but even there, he has Hollywood on the brain. We head for the children's section and Fred makes straight for the books with movie tie-ins. '' 'Lilo & Stitch,' '' he hollers, seizing a coloring book. ''It's 'Ice Age,' '' he says, grabbing a sticker book. Though he will contentedly curl up close to me and listen while I read him Maurice Sendak's ''Where the Wild Things Are'' or Jules Feiffer's wonderfully comic ''Bark, George,'' it's the movie books he wants to buy when it is time to leave.

After the bookstore, we get ice cream and sit on the bench outside the store. Fred licks at his cone and reminisces about his favorite scenes from movies. ''You like when Stuart Little driving his car in his house?'' he'll ask, recalling an apparent high point from ''Stuart Little 2.'' ''That funny. You think that funny?''

I nod and say, ''Yes, I think it's funny.''

''Me, too,'' says Fred. Then he takes another lick of his cone, dripping by now. We dump the last of the cone in the trash can, he slips his sticky little hand into mine and we head home, where Fred will reunite with his parents. It's another happy ending in what I'm hoping will be a life that knows nothing else.

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A version of this article appears in print on November 1, 2002, on Page F00002 of the National edition with the headline: RITUALS; When Boy Meets Movie, Adventures In Baby-Sitting Begin. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe